As the 93rd moved up the lane, Forbes-Mitchell relates how they saw sitting on the roadside a naked Hindu, with shaven head and face streaked with white and red paint, busy counting his rosary, and unmoved by the tumult of battle. A Highlander said to a young staff-officer who was just passing, “I would like to try my bayonet on the hide of that painted scoundrel, sir; he looks a murderer.” “Don’t touch him,” answered the staff-officer, “he is a harmless Hindu mendicant; it is the Mohammedans who are to blame for the horrors of the Mutiny.” Scarcely had he spoken the words when the Hindu stopped counting his beads, slipped his hands under the mat on which he sat, and, with a single movement, drew out a short bell-mouthed blunderbuss and fired into the unfortunate staff-officer’s breast, killing him instantly, and himself dying a moment afterwards, under the reddened bayonets of half-a-dozen furious Highlanders. Sir Colin Campbell himself stood by the guns, watching the balls tearing away flakes from the stubborn bricks which formed the immense thickness of the wall. Every now and then he repressed the eagerness of the Highlanders or Sikhs, waiting to make their rush. “Lie down, 93rd!” he said. “Lie down! Every man of you is worth his weight in gold to England to-day.” For nearly three-quarters of an hour that strange scene lasted, the British guns battering the tough brick wall, while from hundreds of loopholes a tempest of bullets scourged the toiling gunners. Twice over the detachments at the guns had to be renewed before the breach could be made. The crouching infantry meanwhile could hardly be restrained. A sergeant of the 53rd, a Welshman named Dobbin, called out, “Let the infantry storm, Sir Colin! Let the two Thirds at them”—meaning the 53rd and 93rd—“and we’ll soon make short work of the murdering villains.” Campbell, always good-tempered when the bullets were flying, recognised the man, and asked, “Do you think the breach is wide enough, Dobbin?” The three regiments waiting for the rush were the 53rd, the 93rd, and a Sikh regiment—the 4th Rifles; and suddenly they leaped up and joined in one eager dash at the slowly widening breach. Whether the signal to advance was given at all is doubtful, and which regiment led, and which brave soldier was first through the breach, are all equally doubtful points. Malleson says the rush on the Secundrabagh was “the most wonderful scene witnessed in the war.” No order was given; but suddenly the Sikhs and the Highlanders were seen racing for the breach at full speed, bonneted Highlander and brown-faced Sikh straining every nerve to reach it first. A Sikh of the 4th Rifles, he adds, outran the leading Highlander, leaped through the breach, and was shot dead as he sprang. An ensign of the 93rd, named Cooper, was a good second, and, leaping feet first through the hole like a gymnast, got safely through.